This is one of the few strip I would pay to access. While I wouldn't be paying to access the strip itself, I would be paying to support Breathed and to encourage him to continue the strip. I can't really think of many other comic strips, modern or otherwise that I would do this for.

Yes, advertising is morally justifiable as long as there is choice to not be exposed to that advertising. If there is a website that you are required to go to for say the IRS or other government services. Or you're required to go there for your school or some other "required" website, then it gets far more murky. But if you are going to a commercial or entertainment or even a news site, then it is totally morally justifiable, since there is no requirement that you visit that site. You are agreeing to the consumption of the content for "free," you are really paying with your attention, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Then when you throw in AdBlock and it's ilk into the mix, which allows you to bypass the attention sale, I think it's totally justifiable.

To take it a step further, if you could somehow mandate (haha) that advertising be easily blockable, then it goes even further into the justifiable category, since only those wish to see the advertising would be seeing it. That's the choice... We should not limit people in what they can and can't do just because we don't agree with where we "spend" out attention. Not that anyone is suggesting that. I don't think the question is whether it's morally justifiable or not, since advertising really doesn't have a moral component, so long as there is choice (and there currently is) - if and when the advertising crosses over into the forced and unavoidable advertising, then it absolutely is NOT justifiable under any circumstance.

I really think that is the ultimate crux here: If a person can avoid the advertising (either through a switch, through AdBlock et al or by not visiting the site) then it's totally justifiable. If it is forced upon the person or on a site that you are required to visit for something that is unavoidable (Government services, etc...) then no, it's not justifiable at all.

Other than that, the free market should decide. If the advertising is too much on a site, then don't visit it... that company will either change it's ways or go out of business.

If your data is not backed up in 3 separate places, it's not backed up.

So to answer your question, you should have it on your drive where you access it. Stored on an external HD (or CD/DVD/ETC) in a fire proof safe and in the cloud (preferrably in an encrypted container). So if your house burns up and your fireproof backup fails, you'll have the cloud. If the cloud provider goes bust, you'll have your backups that you can restore to a different cloud provider.

If you don't want to store it "in the cloud" have a trusted friend store a backup drive at their house or put one in a safe deposit box somewhere. But the bottom line is, one backup of your primary data is not enough and never will be.

You do realize that it takes much more energy to create and distribute the US dollar than it does to create and distribute bitcoins, right? So if Bitcoin is anti-environment, then the US Dollar is super-anti-I-fucking-hate-all-living-things environment.

Logged in to say this, but see you already got to it. This monopoly crap is what needs to be fixed. Right now, I would gladly take a difficult (and expensive) to terminate service over the choice I have now: Take Comcast or take nothing reasonable (satellite? Riiight...)

We need someone to bust up these monopolies and let other companies in to compete. This "we are locking in this neighborhood" crap has got to stop and I think it's the biggest hurdle to any sort of competitive broadband in this country (compared to other countries).

T-Mobile in the US is different than T-Mobile in Europe. I realize they are owned by the same parent company, but the operate very differently. You are absolutely right that T-Mobile Europe is a piece of shit. T-Mobile US is actually pretty awesome on many fronts.

A more important question is why are you using a cloud provider without using encryption? No one should be storing any sort of sensetive file on a cloud service without first encrypting it. I use Boxcryptor on all of my cloud services... Truecrypt also works well for that sort of thing... anything. Use something to protect yourself instead of giving unfettered access to the cloud provider and their (lack of) security.

The ASIC era will aim to fix the 51% attack problem... or at least make it extremely costly. The farther we get into the ASIC era, the less and less likely and more costly it will be for someone to subvert the network.

1 year ago, it would have taken less than 1 million dollars to wreck the bitcoin network. 1 year from now it will take at least $100 million, if not more, assuming the price of BTC doesn't tank or something.

Granted, $100 million is pocket change for some large corporations and of course governments, so the threat is still there. But as time goes on, the cost starts to rise further and further out of reach of all but richest of entities, until it gets so costly as to be unfeasible. At that point, it's cheaper to wage a legal or physical war, but that's another problem entirely.

"If mining Bitcoins was so profitable why would they want to sell the chips? Wouldn't they be better off keeping these chips and mining the Bitcoins for themselves?"

They ARE mining bitcoin for themselves. The biggest player in the space - Butterfly Labs - is only accepting payment for their ASICs in bitcoin, last I heard. So their production line is just another bitcoin mining operation: and likely somewhat more profitable than outright mining over time.

If mining Bitcoins was so profitable why would they want to sell the chips? Wouldn't they be better off keeping these chips and mining the Bitcoins for themselves?

If BFL were to mine instead of selling the chips, they would quickly have more than 51% of the network hashrate and the confidence in the bitcoin network would erode and the value would drop. It doesn't make any sense for one entity to mine all the bitcoin and devalue the currency... then it's worth nothing and it was for naught. No, it's far better to distribute the hardware far and wide, making it impossible for any single entity to gain a controlling portion of the network.

No, it doesn't make any sense for BFL to mine with their own hardware, it makes much more sense to grow the bitcoin network and for BFL to supply the hardware to do so.